Maze
by Rainstorm Amaya Arianrhod
Summary: The four mages of the Circle aren't the only ones who have reason to be wary of Berenene, and unlike them, this mage isn't free or powerful enough to just run away.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** This is a re-write and extension of an earlier story; the previous remains because it is quite different. Much fluffier, for one thing. A one-shot, for another.

**Reviewsa happy author. Flames go towards my central heating.**

**Disclaimer:** Only Chiela is mine.

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The young woman was kneeling in the middle of the path, an open mage-kit beside her. She held a stick of charcoal in one hand, a stick of chalk laid beside her, and as she drew runes and symbols onto the clean flat stones of the half-finished maze's path they glowed soft yellowy orange and vanished into the stone, leaving only fleeting impressions. Briar stopped, watching her. He'd come to work on this maze at Berenene's mild request; it was a project, she said, that could do with a look-over, as a safeguard. It was unlike anything her gardeners had dealt with before.

She spoke. Her straight black hair was cut short to slightly above her shoulders and in a blunt fringe across her forehead. "Excuse me. Would you mind moving? You're in my light."

Obligingly he shifted to one side, and she looked up, squinting through the fringe. She was either from Gyongxe or Yanjing, with her golden-sugar coloured skin and the slanted black eyes and the flat planes of her face. He guessed she was of average height, perhaps five foot five or six. She was dressed plainly, and looked to be about his own age. "Thank-you," she said. "Did you come to check the plants? I have been taking pains to make sure that my magic doesn't interfere with them."

"Yes, I did."

She looked down again, and picked up the stick of chalk. "You're on the wrong side of the maze, _Viynain_. The head gardener is some way away." She started to draw signs on a different paving slab of the path, and he saw one of the heavy bracelets she was wearing clank against her wrist, making her wince.

"What are you doing?" he asked, curious. It wasn't magic he recognised, and the bracelets looked like slave bracelets to him.

"This is a bad time to ask, _Viynain_," the young woman said through gritted teeth, drawing a large and complicated sign in a mixture of chalk and charcoal. He waited until she'd finished the sign, and had looked up, dusting her dirty hands together.

"So what were you doing?" he inquired again.

She shrugged, and caught sight of his hands, with the very distinctive tattoos that never failed to give his identity away. "Magic. You're one of the mages, aren't you? Briar Moss, right?"

He nodded. She picked up a pair of wire-framed spectacles, and put them on. "I'm a wordsmith," she explained. "A word-mage. I was putting protective spells onto the path-stones, but what's left that I haven't done has been done wrong." She frowned. "I _said_ nothing that still has remnants of quarry mages' work on it. The spells just won't take on stone with someone else's spells on, so they'll have to bring someone in to take the stones up and replace them with other stone. Why am I even telling you this?"

"My open and friendly demeanour?" Briar suggested, and her mouth twitched as if she was trying not to smile. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Chiela Inkspell," she replied. "If you still want to see the head gardener,and I don't highly recommend it, I'm going to give him a piece of my mind on the subject of supplies and specifications now." Chiela packed away charcoal and chalk in a plain canvas bag that contained several leather-bound notebooks, inkbottles that glittered with magic, pens and other paraphernalia. It looked heavy, but she swung it over her shoulder easily and started off. She moved surprisingly fast, swinging into a measured stride designed to get from A to B with the minimum fuss, and he followed her as she made turn after turn, navigating the maze with some ease. He saw the faint silver glow of magic around her, and the flashes of runes beneath her sensibly booted feet, and guessed that her magic was creating a map for her.

Briar knew very little of wordmages, except that their gifts were extremely versatile, there were few practising wordmages, and that they weren't always accepted by the general community as proper mages because their work wasn't often impressive or had few visible effects. For instance, he highly doubted any Court lady wandering in the maze would guess that the maze was totally free of any danger beyond the odd unruly plant because of a wordmage's work on all the paving slabs. He was falling behind the young woman as she marched through the paths, paying no attention to anything but, he suspected, the path in her mind. He dawdled, thinking that the plants would tell him where she'd gone, to strengthen a badly-pruned twig or examine some of the plants woven into trellises forming decorative screens between paths, expecting her to have moved on, but she stopped as soon as she realised he was not with her and (although the plants told him she'd made several twisting turns by now) retraced her steps to his exact position, and stood there.

She wore a neutral expression, and said simply "You will get lost, _Viynain_" but Briar received a distinct impression of irritation, and glanced sharply at her. Neither her previous behaviour nor her neutral appearance had denoted a mage who was happy to let her opinions show, and he saw her bite her lip very slightly as she saw his reaction. It didn't seem like the action of an accredited mage, more like the reaction to something not going well of a student. Then she did something else that surprised him; hesitated, as if considering something, then stepped forward and placed two fingers lightly on the big veins in his wrist. _My teacher left abruptly two years ago, when I wasn't quite seventeen. There are two other teaching word-mages in the whole of Namorn, and they're far away and have students already. I'm technically still a student_.

The quiet voice rang in his head. It was like the girls talking to him, but it was only words, no images, and sounded more like her voice than the girls' mind-tones did. He raised his eyebrows and detached her fingers from his wrist. "I see. You don't have plans to gain a formal accreditation?"

"I do," she answered, hands twitching very slightly towards the iron bracelets. They slipped down her wrists, and he could see chafe marks where she'd been wearing them. "When I find a teacher. I will probably have to leave Namorn for that, and I don't want to leave the empress' service."

A very small and cynical voice in Briar's head said: You mean you can't.

Chiela turned and walked on, and he followed her, wondering why Berenene would allow a word-mage student in her employ (and who employed a student?) to go teacher-less for so long. And why she wore those strange bracelets...

When they found the head gardener, who was anchoring a lattice in a trench for the purpose, Chiela had a brief word with him, and promptly vanished, probably in the direction of the stonemason supplier. Briar asked where he could be useful, was gratefully directed to some plants for the maze hedges, and proceeded to absorb himself in work.

He only remembered about the student word-mage working for Berenene some time later, and for some reason he never mentioned it to anyone. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Quenaill Shieldsman once, and Ishabal Ladyhammer, and more than once he thought of telling Tris about Chiela, but he never did. The details of the meeting were peculiarly hazy, too, but he paid it no mind.

He never suspected Chiela of magicking him not to tell.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Second chapter, and I still don't own anything you recognise- from TP, that is; those who read the older story certainly recognise Chiela.

**Thanks for spotting the mistake, Orohippus. You were quite right, that fragment of sentence _wasn't_ supposed to be there. Ah, the mindhaze of editing the next chapter out of the document at half past ten p.m...**

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Briar Moss ran into the wordmage again. Interested in the complexities of the enormous maze's construction, and grateful for the fact that few courtiers ventured close to the maze and he could work without interruption just to have something to do, he divided his time between the greenhouses and the maze. 

Chiela, he learned over the next weeks through the other gardeners, was a quiet mage who associated, if at all, mostly with Ishabal Ladyhammer, Quenaill Shieldsman and other important mages. It was generally assumed she was a clerk of some sort, especially as she'd been seen on a number of occasions over the past two years taking notes and writing fair copy for Ishabal and Quenaill. Some, however, thought they'd seen her before that as a girl around the palace, running errands. A number of the gardeners considered her an irritation, getting in their way with her work and dislike of working around others. The head gardener wished, in a vague sort of way, that she was a little less difficult about working in others' presence and the materials she used.

She was everywhere in that maze, working hard and well but in patches as gardeners moved to work where she already was. She was always going to and fro and not always taking a lunch break. He'd see her finishing a stretch of path and vanishing round a corner as he came to deal with aphids on one of the trellises before they spread. However, she didn't seem to mind his presence as much as she did other gardeners', possibly because he didn't feel the need to make polite conversation, or chatter. Chiela reminded him of Tris that way; while she was busy she demanded space and time to concentrate.

Sometimes, when she was less occupied, she did talk, as weeks passed and they ran into each other more frequently. He caught a glimpse of her neat, almost too neat, handwriting in one of her notebooks once, and saw how closely it resembled the handwriting on his pass to the greenhouses, the one signed by Berenene but written by someone else. He also remembered that the greenhouse shield system was only unlocked by passes like that, and despite the fact that he was certain she could never have created something of that size and strength on her own he imagined she'd had a hand in it.

She spoke to him in Imperial, preferring to practise her languages than talk in the Namornese she'd been brought up on. They only talked of mages' workings or the Court, and sometimes of Emelan, Chammur and other places Briar had lived or visited- although never of Gyongxe. Chiela, it appeared, had never left Namorn or indeed travelled much within it.

They'd been working more or less in concert, since Chiela tolerated the green mage's presence much better than she did other gardeners, and Chiela once confided to him, grinning wickedly, that she'd overheard the head gardener heaping blessings on Briar's name for taking the problem of a recalcitrant mage off his hands.

"Don't you mind being referred to as a recalcitrant mage?"

Chiela grinned wider. "Not in the least. People who don't like me leave me alone. Most just avoid me." She looked at him with faint puzzlement. "I have yet to work out why you don't avoid me."

That conversation, like most of their others, trailed off and jumped around in long periods of intense concentration. Sometimes Chiela would mention Tris, who, like Chiela, frequented the palace's libraries, or talk about mages' workings in the past years. She never spoke about her past, and sometimes told funny stories that seemed less funny when Briar knew that they were, like Rizu's anecdotes, cautionary tales- only hers conjured very vivid visions of Her Imperial Majesty's most valued and strongest mages. She never spoke to him through her magic again, and Briar never inquired as to her earlier disclosures on that subject.

When he knew that he was leaving Namorn with Sandry, and that it might come to a fight, he chose to find Chiela and tell her what was happening. She would have to work close to the empress, Quenaill and Ishabal, he told himself, she had best know what was going to happen. Forewarned is forearmed, he told himself.

He tried the maze, but the plants told him that Chiela wasn't there, that she'd left hours ago. Eventually, he found her in a far corner of the library, sitting in a protective circle among a pile of mages' books and leaning against a bookcase, knees tucked in, head tipped back, eyes closed. She looked happier and less guarded than he'd ever seen her.

He stopped at the end of the aisle she sat in, and coughed politely. Her eyes flew open, and she sat bolt upright and saw him, then relaxed. "Oh, it's just you. What happened? You're angry." Her eyelids flickered, and he saw a silver thread of her magic quest outwards and touch his skin. "What happened to Lady Sandrilene? Why are you so hung up about the marriage custom now?"

"_You read my mind!_" He was both angry and incredulous; not even Rosethorn could read his mind, no-one but the girls, and he resented her trying it. He'd already been angry at Sandry's kidnapper, and the anger he'd kept down surged up again.

He walked towards her, furious, aware he could break her protective circle easily, and aware that she knew this just as well as he did, and just as she knew he would he stepped right through the circle, breaking it with barely a thought. She wasn't so close to him he'd put up with the thought of her touching his mind even briefly, and he certainly didn't want her knowing about Gyongxe.

She had stood hurriedly and backed against the shelves, her hands palms-flat against the spines of the old books, seeking comfort as he might from his shakkan, and he broke the circle and stood close enough to hit her and raised his hand as if he might be about to do so.

She flinched away instinctively, her black hair swinging with the movement, and lifted her arms to try and defend herself.

Briar dropped his hand, startled. There was a long silence. "Who hits you?"

She didn't answer. He repeated his question.

"People. When I do things wrong. Briar, I-" Her voice was dull and expressionless.

He lifted one of her hands gently and looked at one of the heavy bracelets properly. It blazed with magic that would be concealed from mages who did not examine it carefully, with spells to bind and keep and constrain. Spells to keep a mage from turning her power on the bracelets' creator, to keep her from turning on her... owner?

_I've seen__ her work as a clerk for Viymese Ladyhammer... She doesn't talk about where she's come from... not chatty, or friendly... I swear I've seen her run errands as a small child... She's not really much of a mage, I don't think she ever got a license..._

"You're a slave, aren't you." It made sense. As a slavegirl, she would have crossed few of the gardeners' paths while young, she'd have had to do whatever Ishabal Ladyhammer said- and she wouldn't be permitted a license, meaning she had to stay with her owners unless she somehow bought her freedom and fled.

"Yes."

"Why?" he asked, knowing it was a stupid question, releasing her hand and stepping backwards.

She shrugged. "As well ask why the sky is blue."

"There's a theory about that, actually. Winding Circle was buzzing with it at home."

"I'm sure it was," she said dryly. She hesitated, and glanced around. "This is a bad place to talk. Let's go to the maze."


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** Well, after that bombshell, we have a charmingly and unexpectedly long chapter. I reckon there are maybe two chapters left in this. Nothing but Chiela still belongs to me; don't sue, review instead. Reviews are much nicer than lawsuits. Thank-you to all my lovely reviewers. :)

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They matched each other for pace now; Briar did not want to dawdle in the dark halls of the palace, and Chiela was even less keen. She led him through shortcut after shortcut until they slipped out of a small door into the gardens and into the maze.

Briar always saw her magic in the path-stones when she walked across them, swimming upwards as if through water to glow on the surface of the stone; but now they were muted and he couldn't look at them directly. They seemed not to want him to continue walking. It was like moving with something sticky on the soles of his boots.

"Walk in front of me," Chiela said quietly. "Or you won't make it another ten yards, let alone to the centre."

"That's you doing that? Making it hard to walk on?"

"Yes." She hesitated, and added: "I'll tell you why when we get to the centre."

Briar whistled soundlessly- perhaps not soundlessly, because she turned on him with something that could possibly have been called a scowl on her face. "What, you didn't think I was capable of large workings? I'm not great mage, but nor am I a tinkerer. Get in front, or you really won't make it through. I'm waking these up as I go."

They marched onwards, Chiela's paths lighting up in her mind as well as in reality with the passage of her feet and mapping the maze for her, and the hedges creating his own map for Briar, so that they never made a wrong turn or had to slow. It was finished now, and remarkable not only for its size but the workmanship that had gone into it. Berenene was due to tour it, to test it with her young court. Briar wondered if she would, now, or if the younger women, like Rizu or Caidy, wouldn't dare enter somewhere it would be so easy to be caught in after Sandry's accident.

While he was paying more attention to his thoughts than where he was going, he slowed slightly. Chiela, equally oblivious for reasons of her own, walked straight into him, exclaimed something in a slightly muffled voice, and poked him in the kidneys. "Move, gardener-boy, and stop vanishing into your own reflections. Besides, did you seriously think I would spend all this time on protection spells without putting a few spells against letting someone be taken against their will?"

Briar turned so they were face to face again, determined to say what he hadn't said before about this mind-reading thing because he was distracted by her flinching. She was glared up at him from under her blunt black fringe, over the tops of her glasses. "If you're going to kick up a fuss, again, and frighten me, again, let me just say that if you hadn't practically stopped then so I bumped into you I wouldn't have known a thing, and all I'm going to know about is something that's occupying your thoughts so much even your capillaries are practically shouting it to the world." This took the wind out of his sails enough that he turned again and walked on, almost ashamed of himself for believing she'd just dipped into his mind at will. He didn't know why he thought so. It was perfectly natural to dislike having his mind poked at. Maybe he shouldn't have jumped to the conclusion that she'd done it on purpose? But she had the first time. Maybe he should have trusted her not to pry too deep, but he didn't think she trusted him either.

Spurred on by occasional pokes in the kidneys, forcing him to move on at a reasonable pace, they reached the centre. Chiela muttered a few words in a language Briar didn't recognise and sketched a few more of her runes on the air, and the rudimentary lines slowly began to glow with soft light. Not so much that they would be noticed, but enough that they could see each other fairly well.

She sat down on the circular stone bench that ran around the rim of the cheerfully spurting fountain, and just looked at him with a rather closed and solemn expression. He sat down beside her. "Listening spells?" he murmured. Just because he couldn't see them didn't mean they were there.

Chiela gestured to left and right, waking more of her magic, hidden in a line of copper wire that encircled the centre of the maze. "None. We're safe here, and can't be overheard."

"You've been busy." It was all he could think of to say.

She smiled. "You weren't around for most of it, but surely you guessed that the signs I was drawing on those paths weren't exactly basic protection spells? And that there was a reason I kept vanishing off to the library?"

"... no." He was dumbstruck, again. She seemed to like pulling the rug from under his feet; for weeks he'd been convinced he was trying to charm a taciturn, not-especially-powerful student mage.

"I couldn't have done it without those trips to the library," Chiela persisted, looking into his face almost anxiously. "Don't get the wrong idea. That's why I had to be so picky about what I used, too, but it's not for waste."

"What's the purpose, then?" He sat back, wondering what she would say next. Her eyes focussed on the middle distance; she turned away, she was looking at something other than him.

"I want my freedom, and I have to work for it. This is the work. Berenene will free me, and then I will get out of here. This country is not safe for the likes of me." Chiela's face hardened. "It never has been. I want these off, Briar." She indicated her heavy bracelets. "I've been wearing them since I was six years old or thereabouts. Don't worry, they can't spy on us, all they can do is cut off the circulation to my hands, causing extreme pain and loss of both hands, but only if I use my magic against the empress." She paused. "That's why revenge isn't exactly an option. What I've done won't work against the empress, if she's smart. And she is."

Briar was starting to feel slightly swept away. This had the sound of a long-held plan. "What have you done, you strange, strange girl?"

Well, that was fairly normal, he thought as she shot him a distinctly old-fashioned look. "You have sisters like Trisana Chandler and you think I'm strange? Never mind. I just... I pretty much soaked the place in protection spells of all types. That must have been what was getting up the gardeners' noses so much when you arrived; the spells were working on the plants as well and they were quite hard to prune. Anyway. Should the Yanjingi emperor come bash down the door, Her Imperial Majesty could probably hide quite well in here, with enough great-mages to keep up the protections because mine won't last that long under a barrage from, say, you and your sisters. Not that I expect Her Imperial Majesty to sink to the level of hiding in what is essentially a decorative collection of hedges, but you get my point."

He certainly did. "That's... remarkable."

She nodded, quite seriously. "Well, I think so too. It's also damned draining."

"I'd think so. And you think the empress will free you for it?" Briar didn't want to spoil her plans, but he thought that was rather optimistic. Surely it would just make Berenene want to hang onto her more?

"I'm certain." She smiled sheepishly and leaned a little away from him. "Please don't hit me. I've been factoring you and your sisters into my calculations for weeks; she won't let you get away without a fight. And she'll tire out her best mages on you, and be wary of mages for a good while after that; she also won't know that i had to have those trips to the library to keep me functioning. Keeping me would mean, to her, new slave bracelets, special quarters, keeping me under people's eyes at all times without letting the whole world know that I'm not just an indentured servant- in short, it would cost money. Her treasury is already stretched, and it's going to get more stretched. She has the work I've been putting in to serious magical workings for years without pay of any sort, which has kept me in her good graces, and I don't want any of it." Her smile vanished, although she kept a wary eye on Briar. "If she doesn't let me go, I can probably make it so that she can't afford to keep me."

"How?" he asked, slightly stunned. He hadn't expected this- well, no changes there, then.

Chiela turned a 'Mila bless me, are you stupid?' look on him. "Briar, there's a lot of writing in this palace."

"It makes sense now you say it, but I'm still not sure it'll work."

"It'd better." She had stopped leaning away from him, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Chiela rested her head on his shoulder.

They were quiet for a long time. Chiela forced herself to pay no attention to such of his thoughts as she could feel running just beneath the surface of his skin. She didn't want to know about what had happened to _Clehame_ Sandrilene unless he told her.

"Sandry got kidnapped," he said at last, deliberately. "I'm telling you so's you know to watch out until you can get away, because they had signs to keep a mage's power in check."

"Signs require words," Chiela pointed out, "and who's going to want a commoner slave mage? And why do you care anyway? Is _Clehame_ Sandrilene all right?"

"Thoroughly pissed off, very sore, and ready to quit Namorn at the first second of sunlight, but other than that she's fine."

He felt a tremor of laughter pass through Chiela. "Right. Well, that's good. I take it you're leaving?" she added tentatively.

"What makes you doubt it?" he asked, ready to be surprised.

"I don't know. I just... I've heard more rumours than I care to think about on the subject of you and this girl and that girl. Particularly someone called Caidlene."

Well, that alone was surprising. He'd expected well-thought-out political reasoning. "I wouldn't abandon my sisters for Caidy, of all people-"

"I think she likes to think you would-" Chiela interrupted.

"-well, she's going to be disappointed, then, ain't she? And besides, she slapped me this evening. I think I can safely say it's over." Briar grinned as he felt Chiela laugh again.

"Not necessarily." Her voice was teasing. "You hafta watch these Namornese nobles, y'know." For the first time, she let a faint trace of a less than clear-cut accent slip through, the voice she'd probably talked in before she'd become a mage-student.

He laughed back at her. "Yes, I know. Well, Sandry and Tris and Daja-" he hesitated a bit; what if Daja wanted to stay with Rizu?- "and me-"

"-I," she reproved, so "I," he corrected himself, and carried on: "are going back to Emelan. Quite peacefully. If Her Imperial Majesty chooses to set the dogs on us-" Chiela snickered quietly at the notion of Quen or Ishabal as dogs, and he wondered how long this unaccustommed openness would last- "Her Imperial Majesty can do it, but we're still going."

She nodded, somehow accidentally bashing his jaw. "Ow." Chiela leaned back, realising how far she'd travelled from letting Briar put his arm around her. Briar could almost hear the thought 'oops'- in fact, he could, layered with overtones of severe panic and 'Mila bless me, that was close!' that weren't exactly flattering –and he could certainly see her blush. "I have to go now, I'll be missed. I- I- try not to let the imperial will kill you."

"I'll do my best," he said, and somehow that only served to make her blush more, and she fled, calling a hasty 'good-bye!' over her shoulder. The soft glow of the runes faded, and the fire of the circle that had kept listeners out extinguished itself, leaving him in total darkness.

Briar stood there, frozen, for a few moments. Then he shrugged, and began to make his way out of the maze, giving Chiela enough time to get ahead.

Although he'd entertained the vague and totally spurious hope of finding her somehow, and he was sure no matter what disguise she used he'd recognise her, he didn't see her again for years, except for the faint silhouette of a fleeing shadow, and that might not have been Chiela.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** Another chapter. About one to go, I think. See previous chapters for disclaimers, and do as a lot of cool people have done already and _**review!**_ : )

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"Briar, no-one's heard a word of her," said Lady Sandrilene fa Toren, stitch-witch and sister. "Either she's managed to disappear right off the face of the land, or she's dead."

Briar got to his feet. "I still think she's alive, somehow."

Sandry got to her feet and stretched, putting the reports and letters that Ambros still, for some reason, sent her, aside. She'd spent the entire morning reading them, especially since one of them contained a simple reply to Briar's question: 'Did you ever hear of a word mage called Chiela Inkspell?'

The answer had been brief, and had contained the information that after being released from her bonds of indenture (Briar forgave Ambros this minor inaccuracy, as it still wouldn't be common knowledge that Chiela had been a slave) a young mage with that name had declared her intention to travel and seek a license. She had not told anyone where she was going. No further communication had been made by her. Ambros apologised for having such little information to give, but that he hadn't known much of her at all. The motion to free her had been passed by the nobles' council- it was a simple, quite commonplace thing to do, and no-one had noted anything different.

Part of the problem was that Chiela wasn't distinctive, except possibly to Briar. She could travel quite easily without giving her real name and profession away; she looked as much a Yanjingi or Gyongxean as any and could change her name to sound like a refugee, and could earn her way as a clerk or minor hedgewitch, distributing charms and spells. It had been four years, and she had been not-quite-nineteen then. Who knew how she'd changed?

"Well, don't give up hope," Sandry said, with reasonable kindness. "I didn't know her, of course, but she must have been special for you to remember her so long."

"It would have been hard to forget her," Briar pointed out. "She's the only person who's ever read my mind by accident. How's Pasco?"

Sandry smiled. "Well. Precocious and occasionally cocky, but well. He seems to drive your Evvy up the wall."

"Yes," Briar agreed. "Are you stopping for lunch, or have you got more papers to trawl through?" He tweaked her nose, and she made a face at him.

"No, I want my lunch."

"So do I."

"You're always hungry. That's why Rosethorn used to call you the Bottomless Pit."

"What do you mean, 'used to'?" They both laughed.

* * *

Briar wasn't the only one who wanted lunch. Having finally made it to Emelan, after several years of alternately amusing, hair-raising, saddening and terrifying episodes in which Chiela travelled around as much as she could ever want to, and then after a short while more of getting to Summersea, and then finally to Winding Circle, Chiela found herself struggling with a certain amount of red tape.

Her horse had, considerately, been led away to be fed and watered, leaving Chiela standing in the hot sun, packs about her, and waiting for something to be done. She could feel her lips thinning in irritation, and she was barely keeping her foot, which desperately wanted to tap disapprovingly, under control.

It was, certainly, unusual for a mature-student-who-wasn't-exactly-a-student to turn up at Winding Circle, especially one who didn't seem to have a relatively common type of magic, like green or stone magic. No, this mature-student was a twenty-three-year-old wordmage, with a lot of studying, no credentials, and rapidly eroding patience.

Chiela sat on one of her packs and looked around. She was unlikely to get sunburnt, but she was wearing a hat and the recommended sun ointment in any case.

And then, the earth moved. Literally.

Chiela was tossed off her perch and barely had time to swear as she hit the ground and her packs fell over. "What in the name of all that is holy?-" she snapped, before she spotted what looked like the source of the commotion: a girl who, if Chiela squinted through her specially spelled glasses, seemed to have stone magic and who looked rather shell-shocked. Chiela stood, brushed herself off, and marched determinedly towards the girl. "What did you do?"

"I'm not sure," the girl answered, looking around, well aware that the reason she was standing in a crater was because her errant fellow student had kissed her, taking her somewhat by surprise. "I... er. Have you seen Pasco?"

"Who's Pasco? Who are you?" Chiela demanded.

"Evumeimei Dingzai. Pasco is Pasco Ascalon, another mage student. Who are you?"

"Teacher?- oh. Chiela Inkspell," the older woman said, remembering that it was considered polite to give your own name after asking someone else's. After four years of random travel, Court manners were not the first things she thought of when she met someone new.

"Pleased to meet you," Evvy said, and then answered Chiela's question. "_Pahan_ Briar Moss."

Chiela started. "Excuse me? You said- Briar Moss?"

"Yes." Evvy started to scowl, thinking Chiela meant 'how could a green mage be a stone mage's teacher', but then noted that the other woman was smiling. "D'you know him?"

"I did for a while," Chiela replied. "I didn't actually come to Emelan to look him up, but it would be nice to see him. Do you know where I can find someone who will know what to do with me?" She had completely forgotten her former annoyance over the unexpected fall she'd had.

Evvy thought for a moment. This strange woman with a pick-and-mix accent appeared to know _Pahan_ Briar. She didn't look remotely dangerous, just irritated from having been made to hang around after a lot of travelling, and she'd asked Evvy for help. "What do you need?" Evvy inquired.

"Information about gaining a proper credential," Chiela said decidedly. She glanced at Evvy, spotted the faint marks left from Evvy's slave ring and decided she would probably understand. She showed Evvy the marks on her wrists that didn't fade. "I'm a freedwoman, and I never got one worth showing. I need something to prove I can practise as a mage, besides six accident-free and teacher-less years, and I don't want to tell everyone about the reason why I haven't got a proper one."

"Right." Evvy thought for a moment. Moonstream was probably the best person to talk to about credentials, but Evvy was hardly going to talk to her. This Chiela needed to talk to someone who could talk to Moonstream, and if she didn't want to spread her story about, as it certainly would become if she had to trail through bureaucracy, that someone would have to be reached by extraordinary channels. Evvy noted the travel-worn but still good packs, Chiela's sensible clothing and her general air of reasonable prosperity and a lot of travelling, and came to a decision. "Wait here. I'll talk to Lark." And she ran off, leaving Chiela to wonder who Lark was and how on earth she would be able to help her.

Chiela trailed back to her packs, not remotely resigned to baking to death, and began to tidy them, checking nothing had been smashed.

* * *

Evvy returned five minutes later, somewhat out of breath. Chiela had discovered that nothing had been quite ruined, although some of the charcoal sticks had snapped, and was sitting on her packs again. "Lark and Rosethorn say, come to Discipline."

Chiela, who had stood when she saw Evvy, leapt involuntarily backwards. "_Excuse _me?!"

"Discipline," Evvy explained patiently, if somewhat breathlessly. "Cottage. For people what-"

"-that-"

"-don't fit in," Evvy finished.

"Right," Chiela said dryly, and lifted her packs, slinging two over her shoulders. "No, it's all right, I can take them."

It wasn't far to Discipline, and as Evvy had helpfully told her, it was a cottage. Quite a small cottage, but a pretty one. Alas for Chiela's mind, confused by meeting Evvy, whoever Pasco was, and Winding Circle in general –she could have sworn she'd seen a glass house with plants in- Evvy saw Pasco creeping off, hoping not to be seen because he knew she would kill him for making her lose control, and took off after him with a yell of "Pas-_co_!"

Chiela decided that insanity was clearly the permanent state of anyone who spent any time whatsoever around Briar Moss. After all, here she was, having confided at least one dream and a certain amount of her unpleasant past to Briar on the strength of a few conversations, having run away from him because he'd put his arm around her, having trekked over much of the continent just to try and forget him and his blasted green eyes, and then... well. Here she was.

Chiela put her bags down, stuffed her hands into her pockets, and looked around cynically. With her luck, she would now run across Niklaren Goldeye, or some such, and he would prove to be every bit as mad as that strange scryer who worked for the new _Cleham_ fer Landreg.

It wasn't Niklaren Goldeye who noticed the mage who wasn't in temple robes standing in the middle of a Winding Circle road, outside a cottage housing two great mages and their peculiar charges. Instead, it was Lark, to whom it instantly occurred that this was the 'strange mage who knows _Pahan _Briar', even if she did look rather lost. "Excuse me?" she called, and Chiela turned quickly. Lark was smiling at her, and without meaning to, she smiled back. There was something welcoming about her.

"Are you Lark?" she asked. "Um... Evvy said you and... Rosethorn?... said 'come', but..." She was tripping over her words like a fool, and blushed. "I'm sorry, I'm not normally this incoherent, but I've had a rather strange day." That was somewhat better. "And my, er, guide, ran off. Shouting something about 'Pasco!'."

Lark sighed. "I'm going to have to speak to Sandry and Briar about those two. Pasco will keep teasing Evvy, and Evvy will keep arguing with Pasco. Do you know Briar? Evvy said something along those lines."

"Er. Sort of. We worked together on a maze." Chiela began to develop the slight feeling that she was being interrogated.

Lark smiled again. "I see. Why did you come to Winding Circle, though?"

Chiela looked at her, musing that she looked trustworthy, at least, and she could arrange matters so that this Lark wouldn't speak of it. And she had to explain to someone. She took a breath, and stopped: Lark was holding up a hand, still smiling. "Tell me _without_ the magic."

Chiela flushed, thrown into further confusion. "I- I-" She gave up. "I just don't want everyone to know. I need a proper credential, because..." she hesitated, and then pushed back the cuffs of her thin shirt to show Lark the scars. Lark's eyebrows shot up.

"Freedwoman?" she asked casually, and Chiela nodded.

"I just don't want everyone knowing I used to be a slave," she told Lark quietly. "That on top of having a branch of magic not recognised as magic everywhere would conspire to make my life even more of an unfortunate accident than it already _is_."

Lark smiled (she smiled a lot, Chiela noticed.) "I think you'd better come in. What sort of mage are you?"

"Wordmage," Chiela replied, and she picked up her neglected packs and carried them into Discipline Cottage.

As she put them down, a fierce woman with red hair and bare feet appeared. "Who are you?" she demanded. Chiela blinked at her, shocked, and then managed to say: "Chiela Inkspell." Rosethorn- Chiela presumed this was Rosethorn –looked her up and down, and then glanced over her shoulder at Lark and raised her eyebrows. Chiela didn't even want to think about what was going on here, whether it concerned her or not. If it did, she tried not to wonder what they knew of her. If it did not, she tried not to think about what else it might be.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:** Penultimate chapter. It's not that this is short, just that you lucky people have been getting long ones for some reason... fluke, I guess- just how the chapters turned out. Thanks for all the lovely reviews. : )

Chiela is still all that's mine. _**Please read & review!**_

* * *

A more at ease Chiela managed to discuss her magic and her need for a credential with Niklaren Goldeye with remarkable calm, although she wasn't quite sure why when Pasco finally turned up, Evvy having given up chasing him with revenge in her eyes some time previously, Lark slipped out of the room and sent him, protesting, to the Hub with a message. She didn't hear the message, and didn't care to sharpen her hearing to find out what it was, despite the fact that she was sure she could have picked the words up. Something was certainly going on here, something not quite in her reach to understand.

Chiela tore her attention from musing on things out of her power, and returned to explaining why she'd gone teacher-less, and indeed credential-less, for six years. "I'm a freedwoman," she'd said baldly and without trying to use magic, not wanting to encounter this person's reaction to her attempts to ensure their silence. Goldeye had nodded, and asked all sorts of questions about when she was freed and why she hadn't found herself a tutor since. Instead of the irritation at her lack of persistence she'd expected when she told them that she'd given up on trying to find a teacher after discovering that the three certified wordmages she'd found had students and treated her much like a seven-year-old bursting at the seams with magic rather than a woman who just wanted to be able to get a credential, she got understanding.

The three of them –even the frightening barefoot red-head, who kept coming out with sentences that reminded her increasingly of Briar- listened patiently to her animadversions on being patronised and her answers to questions on her magic and abilities. The conversation carried on so long, with sympathy (if not, thank the gods, pity- or Chiela would have left there and then) practically radiating from their words, and Chiela got so unaccustommedly absorbed in it, that she wasn't listening out for every strange footstep as she usually did.

So she missed the sound of Briar walking down the causeway, attempting not to hurry. It had taken him some time to get here, but then Chiela had come on a complicated errand and if he knew his teachers they would keep her talking. He could hear her voice as he entered Discipline, and that was when she realised someone was there. Her head whipped around, burning a muscle in her neck, and as she raised a hand to it, she saw Briar. It was quite hard to stifle the stupid smile that wanted to break out, but she managed to say "Hello" with a tolerable assumption of composure.

He smiled at her, a proper wide smile. (She was very glad she was sitting down, and he thought she looked tired, but happy.) "So you did get out. I wondered."

She grinned. "Did you ever doubt me?"

"Not 'til you completely vanished," he said casually, and took a seat. "Then you worried me a bit. Hello, Niko, Lark, Rosethorn." The three mages in question said their own hellos. Rosethorn excused herself to weed, or something- Chiela wasn't actually paying much attention.

Niko cleared his throat. "As we were saying, Chiela- I don't think you have that much to learn, and there are no wordmages at Winding Circle; I believe there's one in Olart, and there used to be one in Yanjing, and one in the Namornese empire somewhere, but while there may be the odd minor mage who has completely escaped my notice I don't believe there's one in the Summersea area at all. I daresay you know how few you are."

For the second time in one day, Chiela dragged her mind from something it could do nothing about –and what could he have meant, anyway? '_when you vanished... you worried me a bit'_? And did he have to distract her by smiling at her like that?- and said: "Yes. Almost all who have some gift don't think it's magic- as well for them, because that's what quite a lot of people believe. Mistakenly." She rolled her eyes, pushed into unusual expressiveness by her strong views on the matter. Briar suppressed a smile. He remembered a Namornese afternoon filled with Chiela's furious animadversions on people who wouldn't know what magic was if it knocked them for six.

When Chiela had arranged a date and time at which she could be tested as thoroughly as possible for a credential without a mage with the same sort of magic to test her around, she left, having thanked Lark, Niko and (in absentia) Rosethorn. Briar said he'd take her back to the city if she wanted, and she accepted the escort politely.

They talked of nothings until they had left Winding Circle, although Briar got a smile out of her as he explained why Pasco had taken to his heels with Evvy in hot pursuit. Then, as they rode back towards the city, Chiela told him about how she'd left Namorn, and travelled.

"Why did you come here?" Briar asked, and winced inwardly. He hadn't meant it to sound as if he didn't want her here.

Chiela completely ignored any possible implications of the sentence, and took it at face value. "Because I need a credential, of course. And... er." She tried to get the words off her tongue. She'd been thinking about saying them for a long time, and now she couldn't. _Well, damn_, she thought- and then remembered that she had, perhaps stupidly, spelled herself not to speak of it before she had even left Namorn. She had no more than an average capacity for alcohol, even for mages, and though she didn't plan on being drunk under the table, she also hadn't planned on letting those words spill over her lips where they might cause bother her and him harm. "I'm sorry," she tried, "I know you hate this, but-" She brought her horse closer to his, so their knees banged against each other painfully, and reached out to touch his hand lightly, so he could break the touch if he wanted to. _I wanted to say I never meant to run away from you, but I... I startled myself, and I forgot that you weren't... that sort of man, the sort I always had to be afraid of, and I... I ran. That's all. _

She withdrew her hand, and steered her horse a little away from him again, paying diligent attention to the road ahead. Briar moved closer to her, and took hold of her reins with the same hand he held his own in, just in case. He turned her head with gentle fingers, and kissed her.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N:** Last chapter! Thank you for all your lovely reviews. : ) If you're feeling even lovelier, **it would be nice if you could review** again, **just to tell me what you thought**... (she types, hopefully.)

Chiela is still the only creation that I have any claim over _what_soever, so please don't rub it in.

* * *

From where she stood in the hall of her house, Chiela could hear the great bell of the clock in Market Square tolling six o'clock and already dark out. It was Longnight, and she was due at a Longnight Ball shortly. Chiela had a firm belief in the value of punctuality, and she hated being late.

On the other hand, she couldn't go without her escort, who'd asked her in the first place. She'd have been happy to go alone, but having said she'd go with him she had to wait for him to turn up. It looked much as if he was going to be late, which was incomprehensible to Chiela- he lived next door, after all.

Just as Chiela was thinking these mutinous thoughts, Briar knocked on the door. (She thought that for all the peculiar, strange and on occasions downright odd things he'd done, at least she couldn't fault his timing.) Chiela opened it, and received a brilliant smile, before which all coherent thought fled for a few moments. She picked up her keys and put on the jacket she'd been too hot in earlier.

"Shouldn't we go?" she asked, carefully not referring to Briar's tardiness and thus drawing all the more attention to it. Briar noticed, and said nothing, but his lips twitched, as if he was trying not to grin. "We'll be late."

"No, we won't," he said cheerfully, taking her hand (she wore gloves, but her hands were still cold, and she could feel the warmth of his hand even through the material) and steering her down the street. It was lit up, for Longnight, and people roamed the city streets, talking and laughing. "Sandry tries to reserve the first half-an-hour for all the stuffed-up difficult nobles she has to talk to, so they feel important, she doesn't feel guilty and can't be accused of shirking her duty if she feels the need to escape them later."

"Oh." It was cold. Not especially cold, as far as a woman brought up in Namorn was concerned, but there was a bite to the breeze. Chiela shivered as a frosty gust of wind hit her, and Briar pulled her a little closer.

"Cold?"

"Yes," Chiela answered, well aware that she couldn't just put down slightly reddened cheeks to the breeze. At least she wasn't quite so cold, she consoled herself, and nor was she as completely poleaxed as she had been the day Briar had kissed her on the road between Winding Circle and Summersea.

It took very little time to reach the Duke's citadel from Cheeseman Street, one of the reasons Daja had bought her home in that street. Chiela hadn't chosen her home on the basis of its proximity to Lady Sandry and Duke Vedris- no, that had had rather more to do with the fact that for such a large house it was impossibly cheap, due to the mages next door –but she was glad for it now, because it meant they wouldn't be too late. They told the guards who they were, and walked up the presentation stairs, ushered every step of the way (Chiela had removed her gloves, and she could feel Briar's sneaking discomfort at the over-courteousness) to the doors behind which the party was just about audible. They could hear chatter and talk and the faint strains of musicians striving bravely to make themselves heard.

The footman asked their names, which they gave, and the footman's colleagues threw open the heavy doors as the footman who took their names announced: "Briar Moss and Chiela Inkspell."

_It's a measure of how easy it is to develop a reputation_, Chiela reflected, _that he didn't tack on a title- if mages have one here; I can never remember_. The truth was that Briar Moss was already a well-known name, and Chiela Inkspell was that rare thing, a strong wordmage (wearing a medallion, as was Briar, which was more conclusive than any title.) _In fact_, Chiela concluded with a smile to herself for the neatness of it, _the medallion says it all_.

Although they'd let go of each other's hands, they remained close together for a reason neither of them could name as they walked in and greeted Sandry and other friends, as well as some whom Chiela classified as 'unfortunate acquaintances' and Briar classified as 'toadies'.

Despite Chiela's earlier conviction, they were not the last to arrive: Evvy and Pasco, Evvy looking decidely uncomfortable, had been allowed to attend. They were already deep in conversation with some obscure noble. As Chiela looked around, she saw Daja and Tris arrive in quick succession (she knew, just from that tiny smile that dragged at the corner of his lips, that he'd felt them arrive, so she didn't tell him what he knew anyway.)

Some bells later, Chiela had refused more cups of wine and offers to dance than she cared to count, because she wasn't much of a dancer and the last time she drunk wine her words turned into explosive maroon bubbles. Everyone was waiting, if not with bated breath than with mild anticipation, for the great clock to strike last bell and mark the solstice. Briar had, after a few dances with the hopeful noblewomen, who he'd handled with his usual charm, disappeared.

Chiela was, by this time, starting to get quite irritated. Why ask someone to go to a party and then disappear?

It was at that precise moment, exercising his usual remarkanle timing, that Briar re-appeared by her shoulder, startling her. (Chiela, he knows, does not startle well, but he's less likely to upset her if he does it that anyone else.)

"What is it?" she asked, heartbeat calming.

He had a grin full of innocence on his face, which she totally mistrusted. "Come and look at this."

She followed him down to one of the gardens near the ballroom (experiencing misgivings based on her previous life in Namorn, but Briar isn't like that, she told herself) on a small path that leads to a little clearing.

It was small, and it had an equally small fountain in it. There were no benches, and the greenery around them was different, and there was no ring of thick copper wire with her spells wound around it entrenched in the earth, but Chiela was still reminded irresistibly of the maze in Namorn.

Nevertheless, she followed him into the clearing, and sketched a rune in mid-air, like those she'd drawn on a dark night, only less muted. The same lines of light follow her fingertips, settling into the path she makes for them with her magic in the air, and the clearing lit up.

Briar knelt by a plant, seemingly distracted and allowing it to curl around his fingers.

"It must be nearly last bell," Chiela remarked, unsure why he'd brought her out here. "Do we go back inside?"

"I'm fine," Briar replied, standing. "Do you want to go back in?"

"No," Chiela admitted, sticking a hand under the fountain to feel the cool water on her fingers. "It's nice, out here, not stuffy." Briar said nothing. "Is something... wrong?"

"No." He stood, and Chiela realised how much taller he was than her. Three inches, at least. (She still wasn't afraid, though. She'd been afraid before, and she'd been wrong, she told herself.)

The first chime of the bell striking Longnight rang out, and Briar smiled at her. She smiled back as the last chimes rang out. "Happy new year. Here's to hoping you'll stop moaning about long nights and plants dying back."

"Happy new year," he returned, still smiling, and took her hand. "We should probably return to the ball. They'll miss us." His eyes sparkled. "I thought you'd appreciate missing the cheer and the bit where everyone feels compelled to kiss or shake hands with their neighbour, even if the kisses are usually just a kiss on the cheek." Her involuntary shudder told him he was right, and he laughed softly. She glared at him for that sally, until it turned into a lopsided, unwilling smile, and he took her hand. "Let's go back."

They walked home together a couple of hours later, among the laughter and talk and street-festivals. Cheeseman Street was as full of parties as anywhere else; Tris had returned to number six half an hour ago, but number eight was still dark. Chiela fished her keys out of a pocket as they stood near her door. "Good night." She stood on tiptoes and kissed him lightly on the lips, and then unlocked her door with a soft word whispered into the night (he _knew_ those keys were just for show) and left him standing in the dark again.

Only this time, he knew he would see her tomorrow; and it wasn't the unrelieved dark of the maze, when Chiela had taken the lights with her. Even though the street-parties' lights were a good way away from the mages' houses (no-one sensible puts a festival under Trisana Chandler's window), there was still light. He looked down at his hand, and grinned: there, on the back of the hand, glowing softly among the vines, was a tiny rune like the ones she'd used to cast light.

She'd left him light to tell him she'd be back.


End file.
